We had a feeling this was going to be an exciting year for us for all sorts of reasons but we're bowled over this morning to find out we've been shortlisted for the 2008 Bloggies in the Best European Weblog category! We're in illustrious company, rubbing shoulders with our neighbours, Diamond Geezer and Arseblog as well as Parisian gastro girl Chocolate & Zucchini and the far flung Iceland Weather Report. We're all feeling a......

Dear readers, you may have noticed something different about Londonist. Do not be alarmed, we have introduced two new things to enhance your enjoyment of Londonist and they are... ... Tags! Instead of being confined to narrow categories, every post is now tagged with specific tags, things that help you find specific kinds of posts (say, all of our Christmas posts) or browse broader categories easily (say, all of our music posts). Very soon, our......

The Met is expanding its use of Tasers, now permitting non-firearms officers to carry the stun guns. Today is the first day in a trial of increased Taser use; the Met is looking to use them as an alternative in violent situations where guns are not needed. Tasers work by sending a charge of 50,000 volts through the body of the person they are used on (imagine a static electricity shock that could temporarily......

Another faith school is ruffling feathers, following on from yesterday's news about the JFS - and this one hasn't even opened yet. The Hindu Krishna-Avanti school is due to open next year in Harrow, north-west London and is causing a certain amount of concern in stipulating that at this point, the school authorities will prioritise applications from Hindu families practicing the religion regularly, mainly needing proof of regular worship at home and at temples,......

Regular readers, occasional visitors, the people we work with and those who end up here because of an unlikely Google search may not be aware of the team behind the scene. But we're there, at the 21st century version of the coalface, at our keyboards, on our laptops, putting Londonist together with pleasure. Seeing, doing, thinking, shopping, travelling, Photoshopping, researching and making up stuff about London is a great deal of fun and we've......

There are lots of feral cats on the Olympics site that are at risk of being killed There was a gas leak in Hammersmith today You can use your mobile phone as an Oyster card It is possible to have too many pens and pencils There aren't enough midwives in London Image courtesy of DB007 via the Londonist flickr group.......

Over on our flickr group there has been some interesting discussion about Google Maps. It's web 2.0 crazy. Simon Crubellier began the thread ('Google Maps Strangeness') with, Has anyone looked at the maps.google.co.uk satellite photo of Trafalgar Square lately? What on earth is going on there? It's obviously the crack of dawn on a summer morning, all the surrounding streets are empty, but the place is packed... The images of London were last updated......

Robert Hinchcliffe taught our blog to play We’ve been going in and out of style But we’re guaranteed to raise a smile So may we introduce to you, to celebrate a great three years Londonist’s third birthday party drinks Pah, pah, pah pah pah pah pah, etc. We’ll be upstairs at the Grafton Arms from 6.30, and you’re all welcome to come along and help us celebrate. Nothing too flash, like. Just a few......

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

Phosphatic rock. A radium-luminised gauge dial face. Radium paint. It sounds like an amateur nuclear hobbyist's shopping list, but these are just some of the scary-sounding radioactive materials found recently at the Olympic Park site in east London. Contractors uncovered the objects whilst clearing a 100-year old waste tip near Stratford last month. A subsequent survey, ordered by the Olympic Delivery Authority, revealed "low level" contamination and hotspots of the highly poisonous heavy metal......

So please raise a toast to our good health. For a more orthodox numerology, hold your horses (and champagne flutes) for just one more week. Then, we are three. To help us celebrate our birthday in something loosely approaching style, head over to the Grafton Arms next Thursday, from 6.30. We're in the upstairs bar and beer terrace. Full details on our Facebook page. Note that we won't be laying on any free beer.......

That's right, in the computer room, with the lead piping. Guest commenting is no more. To cut down on spammers, trollers, nobbers, roarers and general troublemakers, commenting on Londonist and any other 'ist' blog now requires you to sign in. It's dead easy, though. Just follow the prompts at the bottom of any post, or at the top left of this page. Signing in also allows you to keep track of your comments and......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

Well, not quite. But in a bit. On 25 October, it'll be three years since we started posting. And we're throwing a massive party to celebrate. Well, again, not quite. We're having a friendly gathering in a pub, to which you're all invited. Some, but not all, of the following will be available: beer, monkey acrobats, celebrity mud wrestling, ninja bar staff, celebrity ninja monkey beer wrestling, cupcakes, dignity. Where: Grafton Arms, 72 Grafton......

Just one day to go until the third FREE Londonist guided walk. In a nutshell, it's a tour of the more macabre side of Bloomsbury starting at 7pm tomorrow (Fri 11 Oct) outside Atlantis Books, Museum Street. But more details here. We've also negotiated discount tickets for a remarkable and related event taking place later that evening. Curzon Soho are screening several films about London at night, interspersed with readings from the awesome Night......

Paris thinks it can take us on as a financial hub. Quand les cochons volent. Rare Faberge egg up for sale. Now, don't know about you, but we've never been able to take such things seriously since Viz's Tony Hadley Faberge pineapple. Anyone else remember that? Prince Harry is dead! In bronze at least. Alexandra Palace: nobody's ever really known what to do with it, and the pattern continues. Image courtesy of Homemade via......

It’s time to announce our third Londonist guided walk. When: October 12. Meet at 7pm outside Atlantis Books, Museum Street. What: This walk around Bloomsbury will mention Mr Crowley, screaming queens – of the Egyptian variety – haunted clocks, incompetent executioners and much else as it meanders from St Giles to Holborn. The walk lasts about ninety minutes and focuses on spooky events and odd folklore. Who: As usual, this offbeat tour is led......

Arsenal profits on the rise, thanks to new stadium. The allotment keepers' last stand. Where's Arthur Fowler when you need him? Oh yeah. Dead. Trafalgar Square art exposes ills of the sex trade. The folk who decide which supernatural beings are worth worshiping declare that Jesus' mum is not haunting a Surbiton pine tree. Baron von Greenback has urine-drinking wife. Image courtesy of the ever-brilliant onionbagblogger via the Londonist flickr group.......

Londonist has learnt with relief that London’s Community Wardens are to be taught to smile. Well, they are at least to be taught stuff other than marshalling resentful kids, scribbling reports on graffiti and harassing shopkeepers who infringe on the pavements 1cm too far. The London Development Agency is to train 200 or so of our boys (and gels) in blue (and red and black and yellow) to be nice to tourists, with a......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

How's this for political handbags? "Ms Grell told voters her rival Barry Smith claimed to be married yet had a 14-year-old Thai boyfriend." City banker 'not German enough'. He probably mentioned the war. John Hurt finds he's not from Ireland, but Croydon. His most gut-wrenching experience since that alien parasite ruptured his abdominopelvic cavity. BBC headline 'Cocaine users are getting younger'. Who needs expensive skin care products when you can reverse the ageing process......

National Uniion of Students uses Facebook to overturn HSBC charges. Are you listening Bob Crow? Are you? Speaking of which, Metronet may be 'hard to sell' because of its equator-sized debts. To use 2005 parlance, 'who'd have thunk it?'. Also up for sale: that massive annual arms fair hosted by Reed-Elsevier. Protests, public pressure and a well-judged bit of internal lobbying have persuaded the company to sell the event. Like the Metronet sale, this......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

The Telegraph talks about our foreign rich people and how they'd look on Booth's poverty map. Including this wanted Russian oligarch. The London Eye - who would now dare pull it down? Memorial service marks 10th anniversary of the death of The People's Princess. Gawd rest her soul. Flickr image from Malias' photostream.......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness – we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

This morning, Grandmothers were saving lives. Now, just a few hours later, they're being found guilty of murder. The news is seeing more and more about the terrifying 'honour killings' that seem to be happening amongst families. Bachan Athwal from Hayes, even boasted to relatives that she had got a relative to strangle her daughter-in-law, Surjit Athwal, and throw her body into a river in Punjab. This was nine years ago. Despite the horror......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......